Ecoimagination ParkReinventing Schenectady’s Nott Industrial Park

Ecoimagination Park is a collaborative effort to turn a community liability into a community asset with lasting value.

Imagined is a nature park with museum emphasizing the anthropology of human resource use from the Iroquois to the modern global consumer. Family and tourism friendly. Imagine Avatar’s concept of Disneyland…

Small green entrepreneurial businesses, think-tanks, or green residential housing could easily collocate.

Local/Ecotourism• Increasing global popularity of all things green; proactive initiatives underway across

the globe• A need for “local and eco-tourism” opportunities for New York City and other

metropolitan areas• Public transportation connections with Amtrak and Greyhound; day trip from

Saratoga• Augments Schenectady’s new status as GE World Renewable Headquarters• Pollution Legacy forever a blight on Schenectady that decreases property value• Park can help revolutionize waste collection in Schenectady with biodegradable

compost collection for building soil; pick up kitchen scraps in card board boxes - recycling rate in Schenectady is 10-20%; San Francisco 70%

• Biostimulate/bioaugment existing ecosystem by planting native trees in composted soil

• Ecoimagination park recalls history in Dutch land reclamation, while also resembling cutting edge projects like Palm Islands/WORLD project in the Dubai

World Project, Dubai

Palm Island Project, Dubai

20% of Dutch land was reclaimed from the sea using polders, dykes, and windmills to create new tracts of land from the North Sea since the 11th Century!

Case Study: Haller Park, Mombasa, Kenya

…overhead views of Lafarge limestone mine…

Haller Park’s Story

Land reclamation started in 1971, by initially planting 26 tree species in open quarries. After six months only three species had survived. These were Casuarina equisetifolia sp., Conocarpus lancifolius sp. and coconut palm. Casuarina sp. was identified as a better pioneer because it can tolerate saline water despite being adapted to dry conditions; it can fix atmospheric nitrogen in the root system; it is an evergreen tree which constantly drops and renews foliage; and it grows fast, reaching 2 m in six months. The Casuarina tree or ‘Whistling Pine’, C. equisetifolia originated from Australia, but is now a common tree along the East African coast. Casuarina trees have leaves with high tannin content (Figure 3). This makes their decomposition by micro-organisms difficult. In order to contain the problem, the Millipede (Epibolus pulchripes) was introduced, which was able to digest the Casuarina needle leaves and create the desired humus for the system (Figure 4). For more than 20 years humus has been created partly in this way.

As a result of the re-vegetation, insects and other life forms colonized the initial two square kilometers area which was under rehabilitation. The most important fauna were fruit bats and monkeys which acted as seed dispersers for plants and trees not initially planted. By 1989, systematic introduction of indigenous coastal vegetation began. By the year 2000 more than 300 indigenous plant species had been introduced, 30 species of mammals and 180 species of birds had found a home in the park. Some of the animals were introduced as ‘orphans’; others took refuge while some were deliberately introduced.

…coastal forest and overburden cleared, limestone extracted and transported…

…ecological desert left as byproduct…

…saline water table tolerant tree species planted…

…local, unskilled labor employed in project…

…completed planting plot…

…short term result…

…long term result…

…suitable habitat for wildlife…

…suitable habitat for wildlife…

…trout grown from water capture…

…solar panels enough to light facility…

Haller Park Today

• The Park makes additional income from over 90, 000 visitors who visit per year. Other income comes from the sales of fish, crocodile meat and skins, rice, fruits,vegetables, Casuarina poles, firewood and ornamentalplants.

• Although the Haller Park is a tourist attraction it was not the original vision of the company in carrying out the land reclamation. Its main aim was to re-vegetate the area with suitable tree species and other forms of flora and fauna in order to mitigate the impact of land degradation. The resulting beauty, together with the fascination of the man-made ecosystems, attracted visitors desiring an afternoon recreation break and prompted the beginning of the initial nature trails. By 1977, the Garden Department was seen as a potentially self-sustaining economic enterprise and was incorporated into a company, the Baobab Farm Limited. By 2000, the park land use involved tourism, game farming and a complex aqua-culture system involving fish, crocodile and paddy rice farming.

Case Study: Logging Road Restoration in Pacific Northwest

…organic substrate and mycelium….

…before….and…after….

Trametes versicolor “Turkey Tail”

Aspergillus niger, common mold

Serpula himantioides, slime mold

Rhizopus

Phanerochaete chrysosporium Phanerochaete sordida

…species that hyper-accumulate or digest pollutants….

Rhizopus delemar Gloeophyllum trabeum

Fomitopsis pinicola Pleurotus ostreatus

…species that hyper-accumulate or digest pollutants….

Fresh hardwood sawdust and wood

chips

Sawdust/wood chips colonized with

mushroom mycelium

Rich soil from composted Shiitake

block refuse

…summary of soil formation process ….

Mycelium Video Bioremediation Video

…diesel soaked soil pile turned into fungal sugars (food for the ecosystem) in 6 weeks….

Research Take Aways• Fungal samples easily grown in culture • More tolerant of polluted environments than bacteria ; highly adaptable to co-

contaminated environments (persistent organic pollutants and metals)• Most fungi researched are from northern latitudes (lots of fungi in tropical ecosystems

where over 3 times plant biomass is produced)• More in vivo studies needed• Competition results in retention of substrate, others grow slow and steady• Oxalic acids and peroxidases and other enzymes • “ligninolytic capacity of white rot fungi makes them the most interesting taxa of fungi

for use in bioremediation – cholrophenols, nitrophenols, and polyaromatic hydrocarbons

• Ability to “train” mycelium to absorb certain heavy metals• Fungal activity actually increases in metal contaminated soils• 92% of heavy metal removed from aqueous solution with fungi cultured on foam • Cobalt, copper, iron, cadmium, chromium, arsenic, zinc, nickel, aluminum• Can degrade PCPs , creosote, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons

…current process of ejecting effluent directly into river is ecologically ignorant….

• GE reports that it spent $560.9 million to conduct the first phase of the Hudson River dredging project. This brings to $830 million the amount that GE has spent on Hudson River-related research and clean-up projects since 1990.

• Dredge is treated and transported to West Texas! Clearly an unsustainable approach…

• The level of resuspension led to an immediate spike in PCB levels in Upper Hudson fish. PCBs in yearling pumpkinseed and forage fish in the Thompson Island Pool increased by nearly 500 percent. At Albany and Troy, nearly 40 miles downstream of dredging activities, PCB levels in the two species rose 40 percent to 65 percent!

Current Approach to Clean-Up is Expensive and Invisible

…Nott Street Industrial Park; an ecological desert awaiting resurrection….

Adeyemi, A.O. Bioaccumulation of Arsenic by Fungi. American Journal of Environmental Sciences 2009, Volume 5, 364-370.

Ahmad, I. et al. Heavy Metal Biosorption potential of Aspergillus and Rhizopus sp. Isolated from Wastewater treated soil. Journal of Applied Scientific Environmental Management 2005, Volume 9, 123-126.

Gadd, GM Fungi in Bioremediation. Cambridge: British Mycological Society, 2001.

Lamar, R. et al Bioremediation of Contaminated Soil. Madison: American Society of Agronomy, Inc. Crop Science Society of America, Inc Soil Science Society of America, 1999 .

Rajapaksha, R et al. Metal Toxicity Affects Fungal and Bacterial Activities in Soil Differently. Applied and Environmental Microbiology, 2004, Volume 70, 2966-2973.

Romero, C. et al. Biosorption of heavy metals by Talaromyces helicus: a trained fungus for copper and biphenyl detoxification. Electronic Journal of Biotechnology 2006, Volume 9, 221-226.

Tsekova, K. et al. Removal of Heavy Metals from Aqueous Solution Using Rhiozpus delemar Mycelia in Free and Polyurethane-Bound Form. Naturforsch, 2002, Volume 57, 629-633.

Citations